鼎铛玉石 — Chinese idiom

Meaning

• lit. to use a sacred tripod as cooking pot and jade as ordinary stone ; fig. a waste of precious material
• casting pearls before swine

Character by character

• 鼎dǐnglarge, three-legged bronze cauldron
• 铛chēngfrying pan; warming vessel
• 玉yùjade, gem, precious stone
• 石shístone, rock, mineral

Idioms sharing a character

• 一言九鼎 yī yán jiǔ dǐng
• 三足鼎立 sān zú dǐng lì
• 人声鼎沸 rén shēng dǐng fèi
• 问鼎中原 wèn dǐng Zhōng yuán
• 问鼎轻重 wèn dǐng qīng zhòng
• 染指于鼎 rǎn zhǐ yú dǐng
• 民怨鼎沸 mín yuàn dǐng fèi
• 革故鼎新 gé gù dǐng xīn
• 锒铛入狱 láng dāng rù yù
• 不吝珠玉 bù lìn zhū yù

Data: CC-CEDICT (CC BY-SA 4.0); Unihan Database (Unicode License v3). Retrieved 2026-10-22.